1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vulcanizing mold for pneumatic tires and, in particular, to a segmented mold including a plurality of tread mold pieces which are disposed in annular arrangement.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the tire industry, segmented molds are widely used for manufacturing pneumatic tires, in particular high performance radial tires. In order to achieve a satisfactory manufacturing productivity of tires, however, known segmented mold requires further improvement. Specifically, besides a complicated structure arising from a large number of associated components and a high initial cost, there is a serious a problem that substantial labor and time are required for manually assembling or disassembling the mold when, for example, changeover is to be effected in respect of size or specification of tires to be manufactured. Moreover, because the assembly or disassembly of the segmented mold is manually carried out within the vulcanizing machine, it is often necessary to wait the required operations until the vulcanizing machine has been sufficiently cooled down, which involves considerable loss time and waste of the heat energy which had been supplied to the vulcanizing machine and used for previous vulcanizing steps.